Oh, and let's see how the debate there goes a few days from now when the Nagasaki anniversary is reached...too many of the current generations forget the Militarists in Japan were still talking trash after Hiroshima and how they will die rather than surrender and take millions of Americans with them.

Had there not been for the atom bomb, WWII would have gone on a few more years. The Japanese fought for every inch of land, and it would have been even worse on their own soil. It likely would have killed a million American GI's alone. The civilian deaths would have been in the millions. Most of it would have been hand to hand combat in the cities and the countryside. Not discounting the destruction of the two bombs, but it was far less then the other option.

People just don't understand what the Japanese would have done in a full scale conventional invasion of their homeland.

Indeed Rich. My granddad was in the Pacific Theater. At the time of the Japanese surrender, he was near Saipan which was one of the marshaling areas for the expected invasion of Japan. Over a million casualties were expected. My very existence may be thanks to the atomic bombs. I read that the War Department ordered so many Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the invasion, that the supply of medals has lasted through Korea, Vietnam, and up to the present day.

The obnoxious bullsh*t being peddled over at that thread linked above is this theory popular among left wing revisionists. By extension it has also become popular among the ZeroHedge types, because for them everything is a Zionist/Globalist conspiracy orchestrated by the USA. Their claim is that Japan wanted to surrender before the atomic bombs, and offered to do so if only we'd let them keep their Emperor as a symbolic ruler. But we refused their kind offer because we wanted to use the atomic bombs, since we are twisted and evil, etc. They usually go on to elaborate that even the atomic bombs didn't really defeat Japan so much as the entry of the mighty Soviet Union into the Pacific war. It's a favorite theory of theirs because they get to trash America and simultaneously fellate the Soviet Union.

I suppose I should be glad I only have to encounter that horsesh*t on Internet forums, because I honestly want to knock people's teeth out when they launch into these libertardian/ZeroHedge/PaulBot diatribes.

Day before yesterday I read about the upcoming bookmark of Hiroshima. The amount of time it took you to read my first sentence is approximately the amount of itme I spent contemplating the date and the event.

I read thru the first two pages of Glock32's linked thread before I abandoned it as a waste of time. The only reason why anyone said anything disparaging about the event is because of the disproportionate amount of emphasis being given a non-event. Now look at the waste of time I've made!